New York is no stranger to design competitions for smaller projects, especially where the focus is on its streets. Among some of those, either proposed or realized, were the recent Urban Shed competition, protecting pedestrians on the sidewalks from falling debris; and, going back almost two decades, the Urban Outhouse competition. As street fairs are pretty commonplace in New York, it would seem only logical that an ideas competition for a temporary “tent” structure in front of New York’s New Museum would also generate a lot of interest. As part of the IDEAS CITY Festival during the first week in May, this year’s event included one hundred independent project and public events occupying over a square block around the New Museum. Inventors, small business owners, artists, ecologists and activists shared their products and ideas, demonstrating the value of Untapped Capital—the Festival’s current theme.

Preservation and re-use of old buildings has long been a major focus of our communities. But until recently, those same communities have regarded yesterday’s infrastructure—our railroad heritage in particular—as something to be either ignored or even erased from the urban fabric. At best, those previous rail beds have been converted into hiking and bike trails. Communities now have begun to recognize that some of these abandoned rail structures can be turned into public amenities. The High Line in New York City is certainly one of the best examples; but other projects, such as the recent conversion of Louisville’s Big Four Bridge to a walkway/bikeway across the Ohio River at Louisville, show how rapidly old perceptions regarding these structures can change.

The University of California at Davis is a sprawling, well-regarded campus that is probably best known for its contributions to agricultural research that aids the nearby big farms in the Central Valley and growers worldwide. Not as widely known is that UC Davis has a strong arts program and a large art collection, particularly of prints, watercolors and ceramics. For example, contemporary painter Wayne Thiebaud (creator of those lusciously bright paintings of cakes, lollipops and farm landscapes) taught there and has donated many of his own and others' work to the university. The school also has a trove of Old Masters' prints from the 17th through 19th Century.

A former colonial trading hub, and now one of the busiest ports in the world, Singapore’s maritime tradition has always been a focal point of its economic life. But having only 274 square miles to accommodate 5.4 million inhabitants, the country faces a scarcity of land for residential as well as commercial development. If Singapore hopes to compete with other large port facilities in East Asia, most notably those in China and Japan, developing a long-term plan for port expansion had to be a high priority for its government. By establishing the Maritime and Port Authority in 1996, the country took an important first step toward solving this problem.

On 2 July 2012, the A.M. Qattan Foundation (AMQF) launched an invited competition for the design of a new cultural and education center in Ramallah, Palestine. As a U.K.-based non-profit, which has focused on educational issues with emphasis on the Middle East, the Foundation’s Ramallah center has been located in an existing 80-year-old building for the past thirteen years, but feels that future demand for its services will require substantial expansion. By staging a competition for the new structure, AMQF is also seeking to “raise awareness about the role of built fabric design in improving the quality of urban life in social, cultural and economic terms.”

Paul Spreiregen flying paper airplanes at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C.

There have been numerous international design competitions in the past. They go back centuries, and for both architecture as well as town planning. This is hardly the first. Yet it demonstrates some characteristics of considerable portent.

It is also a long condition of design in general that design predilections of many strains find their ways from their places of origin to places that are far different. Developing countries have long drawn on the design systems, “styles” if you prefer, of more developed neighbors. Even within the same culture borrowing from a distant past for present needs is hardly new. To borrow the old for use in the new has been a characteristic of architecture. It can be seen as a search for identity and order through architectural form.

If there are still any doubts about the profession of architecture being a global phenomenon, they are fully dispelled by the recent competition for the Al Jamea campus in Nairobi, Kenya. Sponsored by a Moslem group in India, and managed by a professional adviser in California, this invited campus plan competition involved designers from the U.S., Great Britain, and India.

Kent State University’s College of Architecture and Environmental Design

By Stanley Collyer

Winning entry by Weiss/Manfredi

Serving the needs of students is one thing. Making a strong architectural statement as a program’s add-on is sure to bring lots of national attention to any educational institution. Chicago’s IIT was in the doldrums before it staged the Student Center competition won by Rem Koolhaas. Once that building was finished, enrollment in the architectural program there rose from 300+ students to 900! As a state university, Kent State would not envision such a dramatic increase in student enrollment, as the competition they recently staged for a new building to house their architecture program has its spatial limitations. However, as a byproduct, one may anticipate that a remarkable new building will undoubtedly result in more competition for those spaces.

We are sad to report that longtime board member, mentor and nationally recognized journalist and writer, Grady Clay, passed away on March 17 in Louisville, Kentucky. Grady was instrumental in helping to establish The Competition Project, and, subsequently, COMPETITIONS as a quarterly magazine. It was with his continued support and encouragement that we were able to establish our publication and place in reporting on the national and international state of competitions. Grady made things easy for us from the very beginning, getting an interview with landscape architect, George Hargreaves for our very first issue. Whenever any question arose about an article, or a suitable headline, Grady was always there to pass on his invaluable advice.

Lexington, Kentucky is known primarily for two things, its horse industry and university basketball team. The former has had a positive effect on the city’s urban fabric in that horse farms surrounding the city have declined to sell off their property to developers, with the result that the city’s urban core is more compact and without that ubiquitous doughnut hole that surrounds the downtowns of so many Midwestern cities. As for the basketball team’s Rupp Arena, adjacent to the convention center, this has been a focal point of downtown development for decades, surrounded by hotels, restaurants and commercial structures.

If cities in the U.S. are anticipating funding from government entities to solve a dire need for affordable housing, they should be prepared for a long wait. The national government, a traditional source of funds for such projects, has shown little if no interest in the issue, and state and local sources are at a minimum. To exacerbate the problem, the construction cost of affordable housing has risen exponentially the the past few decades. Gone are those days when architects such as Oakland-based Michael Pyatok could build affordable housing for $100 a square foot.

In his introduction to Form and Dichroic LIght, Michael Crosbie never mentions the term, “wild card,” to describe Office 52’s participation in the invited competition for the Carnegie Mellon Engineering Building. The four finalists, picked from a list of 17 firms, also included three household names: ZGF, Wilson, and BCJ (Bohlin Cywinski, Jackson). So what possible chance could a firm, which had just recently opened a small office in Portland, Oregon, have against a competition lineup of this magnitude? But as OFFICE 52 Principal, Isaac Campbell explained, as a small firm, “we were quite nimble,” and the $50,000 stipend the firms all received to produce a design could allow OFFICE 52 more time to undertake the research involved than might be the case with a larger office, where a cost controller is constantly focusing on the operation.

Reconstituting an Abandoned Rail Line

The Rails to Trails program, which gained momentum after the1984 Federal Land Banking Law—supported by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy—has seen over 24,000 miles of trails established where rail lines once existed. Some sites were strictly urban, while others, sometimes over 100 miles in length, were primarily rural, while others combined some of both.

Plans for the Final Expansion of Schultes’ Federal Chancellery Building

The reunification of Germany in 1989 not only had a great impact on the lives of many Germans, especially those living in the former DDR,but together with the decision to move the nation’s capital from Bonn to Berlin resulted in two major international design competitions in 1992: the first was to convert the existing Reichstag building into a home for the German parliament, the second being the Spreebogen planning competition, which included a chancellery for the head of state as well as needed buildings nearby for the Federal government.

The Renovation of a City Landmark

The renovation of Miremont-le-Cret n 2012 was unusual in that the project was the subject of a competition. This building had long been landmarked as one of Geneva’s most significant modern accomplishments, designed in 1953 by a local architect, Marc-Joseph Saugey. The building’s design is remarkable in how it fits into a somewhat narrow, elongated site, but solving the issue of monotony that could naturally arise had the facades not consisted of a simple elevation with no protruding edges. Instead Saugey came up with the idea of a faceted treatment of the facade on both sides of the structure, thus eliminating any notion of boredom on the part of a casual visitor.

IMPORTANT NOTICE : Unless otherwise indicated, photographs of buildings and
projects are from professional or institutional archives. All reproduction is prohibited
unless authorized by the architects, designers, office managers, consortia or archives
centers concerned. The Competition Project, Inc. is not held responsible for any
omissions or inaccuracies, but appreciate all comments and pertinent information that
will permit necessary modifications during future updates.